The Quiet American : Historical Background

Historical Background

As The Quiet American shows, U.S. involvement in Vietnam pre-dated the withdrawal of the French from the Indochina colonies (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) in 1954. During World War II, the pro-communist Ho Chi Minh organized Vietnamese resistance to the Japanese occupation and in 1945 presented a declaration of independence, modeled on the U.S. declaration of 1776. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inclined to end French colonial rule in Indo-China, but pressure from Britain (concerned about preserving its own empire) led Roosevelt to accept the return of French rule in Indochina.

Roosevelt’s successor in 1945, President Harry Truman, was not committed to the independence of French colonies. Disturbed by Ho Chi Minh’s support of communism, Truman also hoped to strengthen France’s role in the anti-communist alliance in Europe. The United States then provided military assistance to return French troops to Indochina and ignored Vietnam’s pleas for independence.

When the anti-communist Korean war began in 1950, Washington solidified these policies, stepping up military aid to French forces against Ho’s Viet Minh organization that was taking aid from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. By 1954, the U.S. had spent $1.2 billion in military assistance there (in The Quiet American, U.S. agent Pyle puts the figure at only $210 million), which was about 80 percent of the total French war costs.

Set in 1952, the story of The Quiet American rests in this historical context. As early as 1951, the State Department was articulating what became known as the “domino theory.” According to this thinking, if Indochina became communist, other nearby countries would also become communist, like pushing down a row of dominos, until the entire region would become a communist bastion. Believing, as Pyle says in the movie, “We’ve got to contain communism,” U.S. officials tried to prevent a victory of Vietnamese against the French.

As Pyle realizes, however, the Vietnamese hate the French more than they fear a communist state. “We’re not colonialists,” Pyle claims, stressing the need to “save” Vietnam without French rule. Commenting on Pyle’s theory of democracy, however, Fowler correctly states that if the Vietnamese held free elections, they would choose Ho Chi Minh to unify the country. But Pyle also believes, contrary to the Vietnamese people, that communism is worse than colonialism.

As a third alternative, Pyle advocates the creation of a “third force,” a political movement that is both anti-colonial and anti-communist. Some U.S. officials were taking this position, even while the government remained committed to the French side. Colonel Trinh Minh Thé (he made himself a General, as the movie suggests) did withdraw his army’s support from the pro-French Vietnamese government in January 1951. “We openly proclaim our non-cooperation with the French,” he stated. “We appeal earnestly to democratic peoples throughout the world, who are fighting to overthrow communism and camouflaged colonialism, to help us….”

When the bombs exploded in Saigon on January 21, 1952, international newspapers, such as The New York Times, attributed the violence to “communist terrorists.” That was what the French initially claimed. But soon General Thé was taking credit for the action, and the French conceded his role.

The novelist Graham Greene was living in Saigon. He had covered several French military actions against the communist Viet Minh (including a patrol to Phat Diem) and had excellent contacts among U.S. officials and agents. As he writes in the novel, The Quiet American, Graham believed that the CIA had supplied the explosives to Thé. But efforts to confirm that belief have failed to find hard evidence. It is equally possible that Thé acted independently in attacking civilians to establish his own “third force” position.

By 1954, French efforts to suppress the Vietnamese rebellion had failed. Military defeat at Dien Bien Phu forced France to accept the independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In 1955, the Geneva Convention created a temporary division of Vietnam into northern and southern sections pending national elections. The United States, believing that Ho Chi Minh would win, refused to allow elections to be held.

Instead, the United States backed an independent South Vietnam and chose the U.S. educated, anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem as president. CIA agent Edward Lansdale coordinated U.S. policy by bribing Diem’s opponents and waging a secret war against Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh. Lansdale took credit for bribing Thé and bringing him into Diem’s ranks. (Some have assumed that Lansdale was the model for Graham’s fictional Pyle, but much of the novel was written before Lansdale appeared on the scene.)

The first movie version of The Quiet American made in 1958 reflected these cold war issues. As Joseph Mankiewicz prepared to make the film, Lansdale contacted him and showed how the story could be presented as a defense of Diem. The movie, which starred Audie Murphy (the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War II) as Pyle, was dedicated to Diem.

The 1958 movie blames the bombing on the communists and portrays Fowler as their dupe. Pyle, shown as a complete innocent, explains that there is “a very prominent Vietnamese living in exile” in the United States--i.e., Diem--who can become the leader of an independent republic of Vietnam. Such rhetoric, the very opposite not only of Greene’s story but also of the historical issues, popularized the idea that Diem deserved U.S. support.

Diem’s authoritarian rule, however, soon caused political instability that led to military actions between the U.S.-backed regime and Vietnamese communists under Ho Chi Minh. The newspaper clippings that end the 2002 version of the movie tell the tale of increasing U.S. military involvement. Not until 1975 would Vietnam become a unified country under communist rule. And not until 2001 did the film industry find the resources to remake The Quiet American to follow the story of the novel. Ironically, the attacks of September 11, 2001 led the film distributor to delay its public release for another year.

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